"Drift" by Rachel Maddow. History and analysis of our wars and foreign policy over the past several decades. Interesting and through-provoking. Ms. Maddow writes the way she talk on her nightly television show.

Thanks guys, I added a few to my amazon wish list as a result of this thread. I always have a few going:

- Almost done with "The Lean Startup". Filled with great advice regardless of how mature the business is. Metrics that matter and the customer feedback loop are especially useful. Along with the constant reminder to not build crap that no one wants! - Almost done with "Early Retirement Extreme", I really like the writing style. If saving and retirement were a knob, then this book is all about turning it all the way.- Half way through "Thinking Fast and Slow", it's an incredibly interesting book that seems to always increase my creativity when reading it.- Just began reading "Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets". Not an entirely new plot for those on this board.- Just finished "The Random Walk Guide To Investing", a practical investment guide along the lines of The Bogleheads Guide..

I got on a Norman Mailor kick and read his "Castle In The Forest" an historical novel about Adolf Hitler in his youth but the focus was mostly on his father Alois. Then I read "Executioner's Song" which concerned the life, criminal offenses, prosecution, and execution, by firing squad of Gary Gilmore in Utah. It was over 1,000 pages but quite good. The one on Hitler was so-so. I think his best was his first novel, "The Naked and the Dead," about a squad of combat infantrymen in World War 2.

hsv_climber wrote:Bryson: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Great book! The dad and his random exercises are hilarious. The entire time I was reading it I kept relating the young Bryson to the character in "The Christmas Story". I guess I had few sources of information to draw from for that era. lol

BenBritt wrote:I am half way through Suicide of a Superpower by Pat Buchanan. This is another great book by a first class historian.

He's a pundit, not a 'first class historian'.

David Kennedy or William Patterson are first class historians: David Kennedy wrote a masterful piece on the US 1930-1945 for the Oxford History of the USA Freedom from Fear(); William Patterson wrote 2 more in the series taking the US 1945-2000 (Grand Expectations and Restless Giant). These are very good history books (as well as good general reads for the non specialist).

If you want a 'right wing' view of contemporary history, try Niall Ferguson. He is an accomplished historian (I think, overrated, and not as good as he was-- but a serious historian). What we might call the 'white male European cultural supremacist' view of contemporary history. But he is a good historian.

Buchanan you may or may not agree with, but he is a pundit.

Last edited by Valuethinker on Fri Apr 27, 2012 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am genuinely trying to write the below in the interests of giving the casual reader a wider spectrum of writing on American and international politics from that perspective NOT making an argument either way. What I would hope is that the interested reader would discover provocative thinkers who are respected by people of different ideological stripes, and all of whom have written serious stuff RATHER THAN the latest dreck from the pundits with a TV microphone.

All of the gentlemen I cite below could be called 'conservative'.

I confess to a personal bias. Although I often don't agree with them, I usually pay attention to intellectual writers who have also been combat soldiers or officers. It seems to me their views are shaped by experiences I shall never have, and that I might learn something from that.

If you want an American catholic conservative writer, can I humbly suggest Andrew Bacevich?

Colonel Bacevich lost his son in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and he himself served in Vietnam. He is no armchair missle-eer. He is 1). a gentleman (i can attest to this from a note he wrote to me, and I have never met him) 2). a thinker 3). a man who writes from a moral Catholic viewpoint.

In that sense he is similar to Buchanan, but I think the reader would find him more provocative, and more real.

Bacevich graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969 and served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971. Later he held posts in Germany, including the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the United States, and the Persian Gulf up to his retirement from the service with the rank of Colonel in the early 1990s. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.

On May 13, 2007, Bacevich's son, 1LT Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr., was killed in action in Iraq by an improvised explosive device south of Samarra in Salah ad Din Governate.[3] The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army,[4] assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.

Bacevich has described himself as a "Catholic conservative"[citation needed]

Lind was formerly the Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.

So Lind would have views of the appropriate political stripe for the reader attracted by Buchanan. But Lind wrote a very good book on maneouvre warfare, and has some quite interesting and provocative views-- and I say this as someone who probably has zero agreement with most of them.

Can I also add the famous military historian, the Israeli Martin Van Creveld?

yobria wrote:The White Mountains by the recently deceased John Christopher is on the Kindle. As good today as it was when I was eight.

Indeed so. The 3 of them. The BBC series ended in the middle-- it did not work. The White Mountain/ City of Gold and Lead/ Pool of Fire is a masterful trilogy, as resonant today as when it was published-- his fear of the brainwashing impact of television for example. The growth to maturity of the main character.

And Penguin has also republished 'the Condition of Grass'.

John Wyndham is the master of the mid 20th century English science fiction 'world is ending' novel (The Kraken Wakes, The Day of the Triffids, the Midwich Cuckoos) but Condition of Grass is properly part of the pantheon.

Hi,I just finished Edmund Morris's trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt. I have to say after reading this biography I found Teddy to be endlessly fascinating. I was sorry to see the story end when he died at the age of 60.

The Last Light of the Sun, by Guy Gavriel Kay, on my wife's recommendation. Good enough that I've just borrowed The Summer Tree from the library but haven't started it yet. I definitely need a new series to work on now that I've almost finished Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries. I don't think Kay is quite as good as J. R. R. Tolkien but that might be because I first read The Lord of the Rings a) at age 19, and b) in hardbound because they weren't out in paper and not too many people knew about them.

Kay is quite convincing and, like Tolkien, manages to make me believe he isn't just making it up as he goes along. I'd have liked The Last Light of the Sun better, though, if he'd put a table or key at the end. Yes, one of 'em's England and one of 'em's Wales and the king who burns the cakes is Alfred even if he's called Aeldred, but I'd like to know how close the historical parallels are. Too lazy to, you know, read any actual history or anything.

I also picked up a paperback copy of Donald Hamilton's The Poisoners at a library book sale. He's a guilty pleasure of mine, and alas, unlike (say) John D. MacDonald or Ian Fleming, he's vanished from sight, can't even get his book through the library--probably because they were never issued in hardbound--and the used copies on the Internet are outrageously expensive. He was billed a sort of American counterpart to James Bond which is ridiculous of course--even if his protagonist, Matt Helm, also has two four-letter monosyllabic names. Entertaining junky thrillers nevertheless. There was at least one Matt Helm movie made, starring Dean Martin. It was awful, about as close to the books as the first (awful) movie of Casino Royale was to the novels.

JMacDonald wrote:Hi,I just finished Edmund Morris's trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt. I have to say after reading this biography I found Teddy to be endlessly fascinating. I was sorry to see the story end when he died at the age of 60.

JMacDonald wrote:Hi,I just finished Edmund Morris's trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt. I have to say after reading this biography I found Teddy to be endlessly fascinating. I was sorry to see the story end when he died at the age of 60.

nisiprius wrote:The Last Light of the Sun, by Guy Gavriel Kay, on my wife's recommendation. Good enough that I've just borrowed The Summer Tree from the library but haven't started it yet. I definitely need a new series to work on now that I've almost finished Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries. I don't think Kay is quite as good as J. R. R. Tolkien but that might be because I first read The Lord of the Rings a) at age 19, and b) in hardbound because they weren't out in paper and not too many people knew about them.

Kay is quite convincing and, like Tolkien, manages to make me believe he isn't just making it up as he goes along. I'd have liked The Last Light of the Sun better, though, if he'd put a table or key at the end. Yes, one of 'em's England and one of 'em's Wales and the king who burns the cakes is Alfred even if he's called Aeldred, but I'd like to know how close the historical parallels are. Too lazy to, you know, read any actual history or anything.

And, I think, he was from Toronto. So double bonus .

I've never managed to reach 'Lord Foul's Bane' etc. The Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series. He's not a likeable hero, but people do rate the series. My anti-heroic fantasy was Glen Cook 'The Black Company'.

Cook is a Vietnam War vet, and his military fantasy is shaped by that, it has a bite of realism that no other fantasy writer I could name has-- when Cook does an ambush or a battle, it feels like an ambush or a battle.

(to be fair to Tolkein, he was a WW1 veteran. Mordor is the trenches, etc. So his battle scenes too, particularly the sense of the little person lost in much larger events, are quite gripping. One suspects the raw terror in the mines of Moria and with the Balrog after that have much to do with experiences of combat in the trenches.

And when the film was made, the New Zealand Army played the Orcs. That scene when Boromir fights the orcs.. it's a classic fight scene, although a bit too much Kurosawa-imitation for my taste)

I also picked up a paperback copy of Donald Hamilton's The Poisoners at a library book sale. He's a guilty pleasure of mine, and alas, unlike (say) John D. MacDonald or Ian Fleming, he's vanished from sight, can't even get his book through the library--probably because they were never issued in hardbound--and the used copies on the Internet are outrageously expensive. He was billed a sort of American counterpart to James Bond which is ridiculous of course--even if his protagonist, Matt Helm, also has two four-letter monosyllabic names. Entertaining junky thrillers nevertheless. There was at least one Matt Helm movie made, starring Dean Martin. It was awful, about as close to the books as the first (awful) movie of Casino Royale was to the novels.

Matt Helm I remember also 'the Punisher' or 'the Executioner' ? About a man who lost his family to the Mob and starts a one man (and 30 novel) war against them?

I suspect many of these novels were written by a collective of authors who were paid per word (ie no subsequent contractual rights). Allegedly pornography is written the same way (allegedly, I say ). And Harlequin Romances.

Yes the Matt Helm movie was awful. The 'In like Flint' and 'Our Man Flint' movies with James Cockburn were better. The TV series that best caught all this was the British series 'The Avengers': only the Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg (Mrs. Emma Peel) ones are worth it. The double entendres are now transparent but would have been less obvious then (there is always a scene where Mrs. Peel is tied up by the villain, or dunked in a body of water whilst in a jumpsuit, etc.). All to be rescued by John Steed.

On secret vices . Have you read Eric Ambler (the early ones)? His hapless characters get caught up in evil doings with the Nazis in pre WW2 Europe. At that point, a pair of Russian agents (brother-sister) are always on hand to rescue the hero-- Ambler had the KGB as *heroes* . He did break with his pro Russian tendencies after the show trials. The Mask of Demetrios/ Coffin for Demetrios is a classic. Ditto Journey into Fear.

Ambler took the spy thriller out of the land of proto-bonds (brutish right wing characters who beat their opponents into submission) and into the hands of the hapless naif, caught in larger events: the beginnings of what became Le Carre, Robert Little etc.

And Gavin Lyall. His early ones like The Most Dangerous Game and at the very end of his career, his (historically somewhat accurate) depictions of the early fumbling days of the British Secret Service.

gkaplan wrote:Since when does Pat Buchanan rate as an historian, let alone first rate?

I agree - but some people can have a different opinion.

I agree--but if we offer an opinion, we should cast it as such and not offer it in the language of certainty. Someone else on this post phrased an opinion on a different book this way: "One of the best books ever written in my view."

“The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence…”

Valuethinker wrote:[And Gavin Lyall. His early ones like The Most Dangerous Game and at the very end of his career, his (historically somewhat accurate) depictions of the early fumbling days of the British Secret Service.

Gavin Lyall. Yes. Once popular, our public library used to have several, following your link I think the titles I remember liking were "The Wrong Side of the Sky," "The Most Dangerous Game." Aha! I see I have a falling-apart paperback copy of "Midnight Plus One." If it's up to one more rereading and I still like it I'll have to try the others. The local library was remodeled and all the books moved out and back and culled in the process so a lot of old favorites are gone.

Thinking of junky British adventure fiction I've enjoyed... Desmond Bagley. And Nigel Balchin. And definitely Hammond Innes, those have always been great fun.

I don't know if anyone else here would read xkcd, but the alt text on Monday's perfectly summed up my feelings on Rand: "I had a hard time with Ayn Rand, because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge ***hole to everyone.'"

Thanks for the excellent suggestions on this thread. I'm currently rereading the second volumn of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill:[u]Alone.[/u] I have been reading ,teaching and thinking about history for about 40 years now and I still think the introduction to this book where Manchester describes Churchill at Chartwell is the best history writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Thanks for reading this.

I'm reading The Last Testament by David Javerbaum (former writer for the Daily Show I believe). It's knee slapping funny yet provocative. It takes us to the lighter side of theology compared with the often shrill and bigoted religious discourse we encounter via many other venues.

“The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence…”

Frustrating book. Started off really good. The characters mental voices are all the same to the point I couldn't tell in many places when the author switched character viewpoints. The plot and characters were interesting enough I finished the book, but I won't read any more of her work.